


Salvation

by Chromi



Category: One Piece
Genre: Alcohol Abuse/Alcoholism, Angst with a Happy Ending, Drinking to Cope, Emotional Hurt, Grief/Mourning, Hallucinations, Mental Breakdown, Mental Health Issues, Self-Hatred, Unhealthy Coping Mechanisms, honestly
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-09-01
Updated: 2019-09-01
Packaged: 2020-10-05 01:28:03
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,000
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20480699
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Chromi/pseuds/Chromi
Summary: "He has no more tears left within him. His eyes are bloodshot and rheumy, blank and set deep in his hollow face. Vestiges of once handsome looks linger about him, but he is unkempt and bedraggled now, his hair lank and matted, his skin dry and sore. He doesn't care anymore. He hasn't for so long."Years after the war, Deuce is a washed up drunk who sits alone in a tavern, waiting. Waiting for death. But something - someone - else finds him instead.





	Salvation

Staring at the bottom of his glass, hoping one day his dream will come to pass.

The dream where the other survives. Where none of this happened.

He cannot forget no matter how hard he tries, no matter how many years pass. He has drowned himself in more alcohol than he can remember; he has come so close to doing something unthinkable just to stop the pain.

He is a shadow of a man now, sitting alone in a tavern night after night, drinking himself stupid and sick, passing out where he sits if not in the guttering outside. He doesn't even remember where he lives anymore. Does he still have somewhere he can call home, or did it burn down in flames in Marineford?

He has no more tears left within him. His eyes are bloodshot and rheumy, blank and set deep in his hollow face. Vestiges of once handsome looks linger about him, but he is unkempt and bedraggled now, his hair lank and matted, his skin dry and sore. He doesn't care anymore. He hasn't for so long.

The promise that he made to himself, that became his way of living, did not hold true. He did not see it through. He did not die for him. He didn't do much of anything for him, in the end. He failed. He stood by and watched him perish.

He could have done _something_. _Anything_.

But instead here he sits, thirteen years later, jaw fuzzy with stubble and beer staining his shirt. He's a mess, and the locals don't approach him. He's quieter when left alone, less inclined to scream and fly into a gibbering panic, staring wildly and moaning about Blackbeard, Akainu, and his own failings. They have learned to leave the poor bastard with his ghosts, slipping in and out of coherent babbling when he conjures up a conversation with one of them. They know them all by now, know which ones he likes and which ones he doesn't.

He sits and waits for death.

He brands himself too much of a coward to go and seek it out for himself.

He wishes he had died on Sixis and had never met him, because anything would be better than living on with this pain, with this loss.

He doesn't know what happened to the others after the war. He did not attend the funeral. He did not sail off again with the rest of the Whitebeard crew. He crawled away like the useless insect he is, and he never saw any of them again.

At least, not in the flesh. Oh, no, he _sees_ them all right, sees them in his most torturous of dreams and nightmares, or when his brain is addled with beer so badly he hears their voices again. The worst is when he hears _him _and he jerks upright with a start, crying for him and sobbing that he will get it right this time.

Only there is no _this time_. There will never be a chance to redeem himself. He will never succeed.

So instead he sits here and stares at the bottom of the glass, barely aware that it isn't his standard wooden tankard. He doesn't even know how he got it; he can't remember waving over the barmaid. Fuck, he can't remember if he has any money left. Money? Why is that even important? He has fallen so far from grace that he's resorted to petty thievery nowadays, a far cry from the position of doctor he held with his crew. What was the name of the commander who trained him?

He'll likely never remember it.

He doesn't want to remember.

The locals watch as he sways, grumbling something indistinct. He is harmless, for the most part, tortured by his own mind but docile until disturbed. So they don't disturb him. 

He let him go. He let him go and he watched him leave on the skiff they built together. He let him go to his death and he _didn't. Stop. Him._

He heaves a sob but the tears don't come. They're all gone, remember? He doesn't. He aches, and he is fatigued, and he is drunk as always and doesn't notice the man who has pulled up a seat beside him. Even when he does eventually realise he's there he thinks it's one of his hallucinations, back to haunt him and hurt him and make him die in his own mind.

The man is familiar. He knows him. He can't quite remember him. 

He knows that voice. That cheerful, lazy drawl that rings in his mind on occasion, but he can't place it. Something to do with a medical bay he once knew. Something to do with a bird, and with fire.

Fire.

_Him_.

He flails, pathetic, wretched, screaming bloody murder at the top of his lungs as he swipes at what must be a ghost, because anything and anyone to do with _him _is long gone, forgotten, drowned in the fog of the poor drunk's mind.

But he's here, and he is burning blue and gold and reaching for his face with both hands— 

Clarity washes over him. Perfect and shining. 

The world is no longer blurred and smudged at the edges.

He can see clearly, no longer blinkered by the years of toxicity in the shape of alcohol. His mind is free from it, and bizarrely, the pain he had been drinking himself numb to avoid is lessened in this state. He shakes, the suddenness of his state frightening him, and he looks to the man.

He sees the mark on his chest.

He looks into his eyes.

He is much older than he remembers him, but that grin is still in place, just as he remembers it. His eyes crinkle around the edges.

He hears him say that he is a hard man to track down. That he is here to take him home.

He doesn't know what to say.

The tears come at last.

_"Marco."_

**Author's Note:**

> This is what happens when I feel like shit; I take it out on innocent doctors. But I love him too much to not give him a happy ending of sorts.
> 
> Sorry for the angsty mess.


End file.
